Pilots pay to exit work contract

By Wang Hongyi (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-20 08:21

SHANGHAI: Thirteen pilots who resigned from their jobs must pay a total of 25.9 million yuan ($3.8 million) to China Eastern Airlines (CEA).

The Intermediate People's Court in Lanzhou, capital of northwestern China's Gansu province, ordered the six co-pilots to each pay 2.1 million yuan and seven captains to pay 1.9 million yuan to their former employer.

The compensation is almost 29 million yuan less than the sum demanded by CEA during the first hearing in October last year.

The 13 pilots resigned as a group from CEA, the nation's third-largest carrier, in 2007.

CEA rejected the resignations because it said it would incur heavy financial losses, which included investment in pilot training.

In 2008, CEA sought legal orders that each pilot pay 4 million yuan in compensation for the unilateral termination of their contracts, including penalty fees, initial training fees and other flight conversion costs.

Liao Mingtao, an industrial lawyer, said the 25.9 million yuan compensation was far from being enough to cover the company's losses.

It is unclear why the co-pilots were ordered to pay more compensation than the captains, however Liao suggested the former might have taken a more expensive training course.

"The compensation amount was mostly about how much the CEA paid to train the pilots," he said.

Liao said some state-owned carriers in China sign tenure contracts with pilots to prevent them from breaking away from the company.